HAIKOU /China/, February 7. /TASS/. Three major airports in South China's Hainan Province served more than 1.61 million passengers during the Golden Week of the Lunar New Year holiday, Hainan Daily reported.
The airports include Meilan, Phoenix and Boao in the cities of Haikou, Sanya and Qionghai. More than 9.4 thousand flights passed through these hubs from January 29 to February 4.
Meilan Airport operated more than 5.4 thousand flights during the period, serving 857 thousand passengers. As for Phoenix and Boao Airports, 3.6 thousand and 466 flights were made through them, and the number of passengers was 692 thousand and 64 thousand, respectively.
In order to ensure smooth passenger traffic during the Lunar New Year holiday, the three provincial airports intensified their efforts in forecasting, analyzing and evaluating flight load trends. Oficials also took measures to optimize capacities in key time slots and on popular routes.
The Lunar New Year, or Chunjie (Spring Festival) fell on the night of January 28 to 29. The Golden Week around the Chinese New Year ended on February 4. Before the celebration of Chunjie, the country welcomed its Chunyun period, which is a traditional time for Chinese people to travel domestically and from abroad. It is a time of mass migration, when people return to their small hometowns to visit relatives and friends. Chunyun usually begins two weeks before the New Year according to the lunar calendar and lasts 40 days.